


That's Amore

by paintedrecs



Series: The Supermoon Series [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: #Appreciate Derek Hale, Alternate Universe, Derek is a little bit of a creeper, First Meetings, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Vernon Boyd/Erica Reyes, One Shot, POV Derek Hale, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Werewolf Derek, Writer Derek Hale, but he doesn't mean to be - it's those dang werewolf senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 19:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4889152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Derek wanted to do was pull on a pair of pants, spend five minutes taking pictures of the Supermoon so Erica would stop bugging him about it, and then return to his cozy apartment to finish working on his book. He certainly never intended to meet his loud, obscenely attractive neighbor, while shirtless and wearing an old pair of slippers.</p><p>Of course, Derek's life has never once gone according to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's Amore

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on a long, slow burn fic that's 2/3 complete and temporarily on hold while I catch up on reading and some other things that got sidelined while I was writing. Obviously the only reasonable thing to do was to throw out a quick response to an incident that happened to me while attempting (and failing) to view the lunar eclipse tonight. (Sadly, my experience was not this fluffy or romantic, but, as always, Sterek proves to be an irresistible inspiration.)

“Put on some pants and go outside,” Erica texted him. “I’d drive over there and drag you out myself if Boyd and I weren’t a thousand miles away on the world’s most spectacular honeymoon.”

“I can usually see it out of my kitchen window,” Derek replied. He’d tried, too; stood there, in his boxers, eating a bowl of dry cereal over the sink, craning his neck in a futile attempt to peer around the trees that had somehow gotten taller and wider since he’d last bothered to look for the moon.

“You’re the world’s worst werewolf,” she shot back. “I love you anyway, but seriously, you should make an effort to check it out. It was pretty amazing to see. Even Boyd cracked a smile.”

His phone pinged again, and he slid open the accompanying photo - a selfie, with Erica’s cheek pressed tightly against Boyd’s, both grinning widely in clear marital bliss, and a sliver of a blood-red moon just visible at the edge of the frame.

“Okay,” he sighed, pecking the letters out grumpily, and rummaging in his to-be-washed pile for a pair of sweatpants. He did a sniff test on two shirts, grimacing and tossing them back, then weighed the chances of running into anyone for the five or so minutes he planned to be downstairs - just for long enough to take a couple of pictures as proof. He’d been meaning to do laundry all weekend, but the writing bug had bitten hard, and he’d barely budged from his computer for the past two days, trying to capture the flood of inspiration before it dried up again.

He was glad his best friends - okay, fine, his only friends - were out of town and couldn’t swing by and interrupt him. The last time he’d had these many ideas floating around, just waiting for him to reach out and grab them, Cora had been staying with him, fresh from her latest global tour but still restless, impatiently hovering over him as he worked. He’d finally agreed to explore the newest Beacon Hills additions with her, which meant the new coffeeshop and a movie theater that’d been converted into a surprisingly well-stocked antiques and crafts warehouse. He came home with an absurdly expensive new coffee table to replace the one Cora had more-or-less accidentally broken that morning by leaping onto his couch and slamming her boots into it.

“It was a flimsy piece of crap, anyway,” she’d said, allergic as ever to apologies, but she’d slipped him a couple of bills to pay for half of it, then pretended to see something interesting at the other side of the building and dashed off to avoid further conversation.

He had to admit he was fond of the coffee table, with its beautiful craftsmanship and softly glowing wood surface, which he took care to polish and keep free of coffee rings and other spills. He was also, although he didn’t often say it, fond of his little sister, even though she managed to somehow scorch a corner of the table before fleeing to her next six-month-excursion - to South America this time, he thought.

What he didn’t love was the incomplete book still sitting on his hard drive, mocking him with fragmentary thoughts that he couldn’t seem to splice back together. Once those tentative connections had dissipated into the air, apparently there was no getting them back.

This time, though, everything was lined up perfectly. No friends, no siblings, no distractions. Half of his new book was written, another chunk was heavily outlined, and he had days stretching ahead of him, with no responsibilities other than feeding himself (if he must) and doing laundry (unless he didn’t plan to leave the apartment, in which case, he had a week’s worth of clean boxers still stacked in a drawer).

Five minutes. Two photos. It was a reasonable enough break, and the fresh air would probably do him good.

He shoved his feet into a pair of ratty old slippers that Laura had given him for Christmas nearly a decade ago, not wanting to bother with finding socks or taking the time to lace up shoes. The writer’s life was a lazy one, okay? He didn’t need to excuse his appearance to anyone.

He grabbed his phone and his keys, carefully locked the door behind him, and hurried down the stairs and out the building’s front gate.

Out on the sidewalk, he self-consciously wrapped his arms around his chest and began to regret his decision to wander outside without a shirt. Being a werewolf, he had a significantly higher tolerance for the cold than most humans, but it still made his nipples harden and goosebumps pebble along his arms, and there were more people drifting along the usually-empty streets than he’d expected. Fortunately, most of them were gathering on street corners, faces tilted to the sky, not paying attention to him.

He crossed the street to avoid being drawn into conversation and quickly scanned the moonless sky, then twisted around to check the opposite direction. Erica would be laughing her head off right about now, he mused. Probably saying more insulting things about his werewolf prowess, as though _she_ could sense the damn moon’s location on a cloudy night.

It didn’t actually look that cloudy, which was the confusing part. He tried again, spinning slowly in place and examining every bit of sky he could glimpse through the buildings and trees. Nothing. A few stars were sprinkled across the darkening expanse, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of a moon, clear and crisp or shadowed by the much vaunted eclipse. He was beginning to feel slightly ridiculous. Was he the only one who couldn’t find it? Had he spent so much time indoors, peering intently at a computer screen, that he was now the world’s first werewolf to need glasses?

He focused his attention - and his hearing, which was as sensitive as it had always been - on the couple across the street. They were leaning into each other in a disgustingly cute way, the woman’s head nestled on her boyfriend’s shoulder. “Two days ago, it was that way,” she said in mild confusion, pointing in the direction Derek had initially been searching. Her boyfriend murmured in agreement, but they didn’t seem inclined to move. The moment was probably romantic enough, as it was, and they’d return home, hand in hand, with sentimental memories of their eclipse-less night.

Derek wasn’t much of a romantic.

He immediately felt guilty for even thinking such a blatant lie and shifted nervously on his feet, as though his mother could hear the skip in his heartbeat all the way from his parents’ retirement cabin in woodsy northern Oregon. The problem was that he was the most sappily romantic person in his entire family, and also possessed the world’s worst judgement - and luck - when it came to relationships.

Case in point: there was Kate Argent, rounding the corner, with two huskies on leashes and a trajectory that would take her straight past him if he didn’t move, and quickly. He shoved a hand through his hair - messy and unwashed - and looked around wildly, trying to decide what to do. She was close enough now where she’d probably already seen him, so the more socially acceptable course of action would be to stay where he was and engage in some pleasantries before she moved on.

The other option was to turn tail and escape to his apartment building’s second-floor landing, which was open to the air and could potentially still afford him a view of the eclipse. Being an utter coward who didn’t want to face Kate’s sneering judgement and inevitably cutting remarks, he felt that this was the only logical response. He fled, hearing the collars jingling behind him, not looking back. 

From that height, he felt a little safer, even if Kate could still, theoretically, glance up and see him. He set his elbows on the low concrete wall and leaned out, now stubbornly determined to locate the damn thing. 

“I can’t find the moon,” he finally gave in and texted Erica.

“Oh my god,” she replied. “Download a fucking star-finding app, Derek. There’s one called Sky Guide, I think. Should be free.”

He pulled up the app store on his phone and frowned down at it in concentration, scrolling through a seemingly endless list of apps that all sounded the same. He was so focused on trying to choose the right one that he completely missed the sound of someone coming up the stairs. 

“You out here for the supermoon?” a male voice asked, and he turned, startled, to find one of his neighbors settling in next to him.

“I - yes,” he said, then admitted, “I couldn’t figure out which direction to look, though.”

The neighbor gave a warm, low chuckle that made Derek’s stomach do something weird in response. “Me either. I was out there for fifteen minutes. Thought I caught a sliver of it through the clouds, once, but I’m not sure. It might’ve been a streetlight and misplaced hope.”

“My friend told me I had to go see it,” he offered, as though this practical stranger would care why he was unkempt and half-dressed in their building’s common area. “She made it sound like it was impossible to miss.”

The neighbor leaned in and said in a lower, conspiratorial voice, “At first, I thought there was something wrong with me. I mean, I had two beers with dinner, but it didn’t seem like that'd be enough to lose an entire moon.”

Derek laughed, and the neighbor beamed. He stuck a hand out, and Derek automatically took it. He had a firm grip and long, calloused fingers, and he felt the goosebumps break out along his arms again, this time for an entirely different reason. “You must live on this floor? I’m Stiles.”

“Derek,” he said.

“Hale? I’ve seen your name on the mailboxes. We share a wall, don’t we?”

Derek flushed, hoping the bulb hanging over the landing was dim enough to mask the warmth he could feel spreading over his cheeks and down his throat. His apartment was at the end of the hall and, consequently, only bordered one other unit. Stiles’s voice did, in fact, sound quite familiar, now that they’d been talking for a few minutes. He’d heard it, night after night, groaning through impressively long, vigorous masturbatory sessions. The first few times, he’d assumed from the intensity and the accompanying creaks and thumps that it was some couple having athletic sex, and he’d done his best to tune it out to respect their privacy. After the first week or so, he’d realized that there’d never been a second voice, and listened more intently - purely out of curiosity, to discover if the partner was merely an extraordinarily silent participant.

He was used to it, now, and barely noticed it on nights when he was wrapped up in his writing, or in a good book. It provided an unusually comforting marker for his days, which otherwise seemed to bleed into each other at times. He would have never said it out loud, but he almost missed it when the neighbor was away, or too tired to bother, or - his heart twisted oddly at the thought - off in someone else’s bed, sharing his beautiful noises with them.

He raised his eyes to Stiles’s, heart thumping in dismay at how creepy this obscenely attractive man would find him, if he could hear the thoughts spinning through his head. Except, something about the tilt of Stiles’s smile and the way he’d somehow inched closer - yet again, without Derek noticing - gave him the impression that Stiles was disconcertingly perceptive. Then again, Derek was notoriously bad at hiding his emotions; Laura had told him on numerous occasions and with great exasperation that she didn’t need to be a werewolf to read his body language.

“The walls are pretty thin,” Stiles said, winking at him. His eyes, when they caught the light, glowed almost beta-gold, and Derek’s breath seemed to be stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat. He was pretty sure he was now flushed all the way from the tips of his ears to the waistband of his sweatpants. “I can hear you sometimes - talking to yourself, I think? Or reading out loud?”

“Oh,” Derek gasped, recovering a little and trying to remember how to breathe normally. “I’m a writer. I - sorry about that, I read everything back to myself, to test the flow. It never occurred to me that anyone could hear me.”

“I like it,” he said, his long, lean body now mere inches away from Derek. “You have a nice voice. I’ve always wished I could pick out the actual words.” His warm gaze dragged down Derek’s body, then back up to his eyes, leaving scorching trails in their wake. 

“You do, too,” he said, then stopped, his mouth hanging open in horror. “I mean, I - uh.”

Stiles squinted at him for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed. “Oh god, the walls _are_ thin, aren’t they? I would apologize, but-” He gave Derek a considering look, an unspoken question lingering in the air.

“I like it,” he confirmed, his skin prickling with anxiety-muddled excitement.

Stiles reached out to touch Derek’s arm, tracing gently from his elbow to his wrist, making him shiver. Derek turned his hand and let him link their fingers.

“Wanna see if the moon’s visible from my balcony?” Stiles asked. “If you’re up for it, maybe you could tell me about your book. It’s a damn shame we haven’t gotten to know each other before.” He waited, holding Derek’s hand loosely, his heartbeat steady but a little fast, as though he wasn’t quite as calm about the invitation as he seemed on the surface.

“I’d like that,” he said, watching in awe as delight radiated from Stiles in response.

***

He ended up putting his book on hold for a few days. But, as it turned out, Stiles, with his quick wit and sharp insight, proved to be more than sufficient inspiration. 

When he handed the first copy, fresh from the printers, to Stiles, he cracked it open to the embarrassingly sentimental dedication, read it with a blinding smile, and rewarded him with a long, lingering kiss.

“Read it to me?” he asked, handing the book back to Derek.

And, as though his infuriatingly, gorgeously opinionated boyfriend hadn’t heard and commented on every word of it before, he did.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a [fic recs blog](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/) and a [regular blog](http://paintedlandscape.tumblr.com/), and you're welcome to find me on either/both. I tend to ramble more on [twitter](https://twitter.com/paintedrecs).
> 
> EDT: There's now a [second part](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4901263) to this fic, and [a conclusion](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4908463).


End file.
